Shadows of Doom asota-1

by Ed Greenwood

  Shadows of Doom

  ( A shadow of the Avatar - 1 )

  Ed Greenwood

  Ed Greenwood

  Shadows of Doom

  It is the doom of men that they never know quite enough wisdom until it is too late.

  Elminster of Shadowdale

  Hearken now to a tale of the Realms, ye jaded lords, ladies, and gentles. Oh, it is a grand tale, to be sure. It has murder, and magic, and lovemaking-and, as usual, you'll misunderstand every word of it.

  Be not angry, mind; the fault's not with you, or me. Life's like that, you see. Lhaeo Rhindaun, Scribe to Elminster

  There is a slim, dark and dusty tome few have ever read…

  It lies hidden beneath a rune-graven flagstone under the circular table in the innermost chamber of Candlekeep. This tome is called The Book of Mysteries, and it sets forth all that the writer-whose name, of course, has been forgotten-knew of the nature and powers of Mystra, the goddess of magic.

  Chief among the book's secrets of Realmslore is the matter of Mystra's essence or vitality. As mistress of magic, her power is far greater than that of the other gods of Toril. Yet, to mortals at least, it seems not so. Therein lies the secret.

  Throughout history, as long as there have been gods, and people of Toril to worship them, the essential power of Mystra has been held not only by the goddess herself, but by a self-willed, loyal demigod-Azuth, who was the greatest archmage of his day-and a handful of mortals.

  These mortals cannot wield what they hold of Mystra's power, but they can withhold it, even from the goddess herself. This self-will, and the mortals' often widespread travels, keep Mystra from ruling all of Realmspace and prevent any other being from doing so through her. Should Mystra ask to use the power that they hold, each of the mortals can willingly let it pass into her, but they cannot be coerced into doing so. At the moment when one of these mortals dies, the power that he or she holds passes into the greater essence of life in Toril, returning to Mystra slowly but usable by none except her.

  Down the ages, many beings have shared this mystery. For their own protection, they have not heralded the power they hold, yet it leaves its mark upon them. They cannot be located or affected by magic that spies upon the mind or tames the will. If not slain, they live many hundreds of years, resisting disease, poison, and the ravages of time. Their eyes tend toward blue, and their hair to silver. They attain something of the grace, wildness, and humor of Mystra herself. And, being mortal, they suffer far more-and learn more wisdom in the wielding of magic-than even Mystra herself. Some, tired or sick of their burden of power, have willingly sought death. Others find death unlooked for, at the end of a searching spell or a flashing blade.

  One who always carries the burden of the mystery is the Magister, the mortal (and oft-changing) representative of Mystra, who holds that title by might-of-Art. Others who hold Mystra's power tend to be powerful archmages.

  Elminster, the Old Mage of Shadow dale, is one who bears Mystra's burden. Two others are Khelben "Black-staff" Arunsun, Lord Mage of Waterdeep, and Laeral, his consort and fellow archmage. Laeral's sisters also hold some of Mystra's power. One sister is the Witch-Queen of Aglarond, called the Simbul. Another sister is Alustriel, High Lady of Silverymoon,

  Of the other sisters, one is a mystery little spoken of. Another, Sylune of Shadowdale, held Mystra's power but perished in dragonfire, breaking her staff to destroy her bane and protect the dale. The last two sisters still hold their shares of Mystra's power. They are the bard and Harper Storm Silverhand of Shadowdale, and Dove of the Knights of Myth Drannor.

  A handful of people, plus one demigod, hold something of Mystra's power. The goddess herself holds as much power as all of their combined burden, or so is the usual ordering of things.

  What, then, befalls when Mystra falls?

  It was the eve of the Time of Troubles. Magic had not yet gone wild across the Realms. The gods had not yet been cast down in the Fall. The chaos of spilled blood, lawless strife, monsters unleashed, and avatars roaming Faerun was yet to come.

  Unbeknownst to mortals, the gods had been summoned together. Among them was Mystra, grown proud and willful over the passing aeons. With the others, she was about to be stripped of godhood.

  Unlike most of the gods, however, Mystra's pride was born of wisdom, of being part of many bindings and most releases of power in Faerun, down thousands upon thousands of years. In the beginning, Ao the Overgod arranged the division of Mystra's power so that she could not easily be overthrown or used as an almighty weapon against the other gods-and so she could never rule over all and would not be tempted to try.

  The secret of her power gave Mystra an idea. She made certain preparations involving a pendant, and began to keep an eye on magelings and apprentice wizards of little power, looking always for one who would be right. Perhaps she knew she was choosing her successor.

  Perhaps she hoped only to gain an advantage over other gods in the Realms. It is doubtful that even the Lady of Magic could have foreseen clearly enough, or acted swiftly enough, to shape the pendant and choose the youngling Midnight as its recipient in the very short time between Ao's denunciation of the gods and the Fall.

  Mystra could not have acted as she did purely to cheat the Overgod. Those sages who have spoken with Divine Lord Azuth (who was present at the Fall) agree that such behavior is unlikely in the extreme. Some-Elminster among them-believe that Ao, the Unseen One, laid these plans in Mystra's mind, because the power of the goddess of magic had to survive the Time of Troubles to preserve the very fabric of magic-cloaked Toril.

  It is certain that, in the few mortal breaths between the doom that Ao laid upon the gods and the Fall, Mystra acted on earlier preparations. She had no time to reach Midnight or the pendant but was already-as always-linked with those mortals who bore the burden of her power. She had only seconds to act.

  To shift enough extra power to Faerun in order to do what must be done later was no easy thing. A single mortal must hold much of Mystra's power, for she had no time to feed power into more than one. (If done too fast, it would surely destroy the recipient on the spot.) A lone mortal must carry the greater share of the god's divine energy without being destroyed or driven wild, until Mystra could reclaim her power.

  It was the fate, or luck, of some mortal to do this-involuntarily and without any preparation. As luck or fate had it, this was the occasion of Elminster's Doom.

  The Overgod spoke. Mystra acted. The Fall came upon all the gods, and a certain doom upon Elminster. Our tale begins then, before mortals know of the Fall, in a place unshaken by the great storms that swept much of the Realms during that time. Elminster and Midnight have not yet met in the Stonelands, and the world has not yet been changed forever.

  As the Overgod Ao is reputed to have said, "Forever seems a shorter and shorter time, these days." Before the Change that everyone alive in Faerun at the time remembers, when new stars appeared in the sky and new gods and goddesses rose up while others fell, a profound change came upon the fleeting forever of one man.

  One man a little (he will not say how little) over a thousand years old.

  This is the tale of Elminster's Doom-and of the heroes it created.

  1

  Mist, Stars, and Mages On Their Knees

  Elminster was reading yet another book when it all began.

  It was the day of Aumry's Feast, when the folk of Shadowdale gathered to toast their lord in the name of a much-beloved predecessor. In his leaning stone tower, well away from all the festivities, the Old Mage sat in the creaking chair by the hearth, his long pipe alight, sighing and muttering his way through a thoroughly hopeless grimoire of some long-ago necromancer of lost Netheril.

  The write
r had been a perfect crazed-wits, Elminster decided early on, and paranoid to boot. What little magic the Netherese mage had set down was twisted by the periodic ravings of a tenuous sanity and by the suspicion-driven cloaking of facts in a torturous maze of codes, obtuse jargon, deliberate misinformation, and mystical gibberish. The obvious intent was to conceal magical truths from unauthorized readers-all relatively sane wizards, for instance.

  "A good one?" His scribe, Lhaeo, was rising from the hearth-cauldron with a long ladle in his hand and an amused look on his face. He'd seen Elminster's disgusted looks a time or two before.

  "About five good breaths of blaze, on a hot fire," Elminster replied, hefting the old tome in his hands and looking meaningfully down at the flames under the cauldron. He glanced at the book again and shook his head.

  "Sixty pages," he said with a sigh, "and only three real spells so far, one of them hopelessly skeltered at that. Yet he may have hidden a gem or two somewhere in all this nonsense. As ye know, I live in eternal hope."

  Elminster snorted, rolled his eyes comically at Lhaeo, and turned another page. His pipe also snorted, puffing out a little burst of sparks.

  Lhaeo chuckled and turned back to the herbs on his cutting board. Elminster watched him with a fond smile. When Lhaeo wasn't cooking, cleaning, or actually acting as a scribe, he was gathering herbs, gardening, gathering or shopping for food, or talking about recipes and culinary lore with every caravan cook who passed through the dale.

  Elminster sometimes wondered why his scribe wasn't as wide as old Luth's fabled bull. If Lhaeo wasn't eating, he was cooking (and tasting). If he wasn't cooking, he was thinking about food, and if he wasn't doing any of those things, he was asleep and dreaming about food. Or so it usually seemed.

  As the old illusionists' saying has it, however, seemings and truth are often as far apart as one's mind can put them. As smoothly as any warrior, Lhaeo suddenly spun back to face his master. He'd heard a sudden, queer sobbing noise-a sound he'd never heard Elminster make before.

  And then the illusionist stood quite still, precious herbs dropping forgotten from his hands.

  Power filled the room. Blue-white flames blazed along the Old Mage's gaunt limbs and flared in his eyes like two cold fires. Elminster looked at Lhaeo with those burning eyes and did not see him.

  With a sudden crackling of energy, the book fell from Elminster's fingers. Had there been some trap waiting in it?

  Lhaeo shrank back, reaching out behind him for one of the flasks on a certain shelf. Elminster had prepared a number of such flasks for emergencies. They held protective potions and antidotes for poisons. But even as his fingers felt along the row of cold, dusty stoppers, Lhaeo knew he hadn't an inkling of what to do. The fire under the cauldron had died to almost nothing, and it seemed as if a great weight were in the air, filling the kitchen.

  And then both men heard it: a voice that was kind and yet proud, in pain but enthused. A mind-voice that rolled through Elminster's mind so loudly that Lhaeo heard it clearly across the room. A voice that crawled with echoing power.

  The voice of a goddess at the height of her aroused power, and yet in need. The voice of Mystra.

  "Elminster! I need thee!"

  "Lady, I am here," Elminster whispered. Blue-white flames licked from his mouth as he spoke. He rose from his seat, staggering as if under a great burden.

  Behind him, the chair suddenly roared into a column of fire that reached for the low roof-beams overhead and then was gone, dying in the instant the chair was utterly consumed. Elminster lurched and almost fell.

  Lhaeo shivered in horror at the sudden release of power great enough to burn away a chair between two beats of one's heart, but started toward his master. Elminster frantically waved him back, struggling as if in a high wind, and that great voice spoke again.

  "Old Mage, my time is done. I am going, and have no time to tell thee what has befallen, or thank thee for the years thou hast given me.

  "You must bear the load, old friend. You must be the one. Hold my flame for the one who is to come." A hint of amusement echoed in the voice. "You'll like her. You always do fancy young maids." Then she was gone, with no farewell but a flicker of communicated pain-and something whispered after it.

  Elminster stiffened. Abruptly, the roaring, blazing force of Mystra's magical power-her very essence-surged into him, filling him in relentless waves. It brought burning agony, daggerlike fingers tearing through his ancient body. He tried to roar but could not.

  In Elminster's numbed mind, the force of Mystra's magic swept bindings, odd memories, and safeguards before it as a tidal wave tumbles wreckage along in its uncaring, destroying foam. His hands jerked and flailed about helplessly, and he fell.

  It had been many long years since sheer intensity of Art had hurled the Old Mage to his knees. He could scarcely remember the last time he'd felt overmatched by sheer power of magic. A wry thought came unbidden then. He'd known this would happen, sooner or later. He shook his head and gradually became aware of a faint, raw, frantic screaming.

  Where-? A protesting thought whirled into Elminster's mind. Why do the worst problems always come when one is ill prepared? He strove to focus on the direction of the sound, raising a hand in front of his face as if to wave away the blue-white mists before him. Slowly, slowly, he drifted closer to the agonized shrieking, saw Lhaeo's shocked face coming closer through the mists-and realized the sound was coming from his own lips.

  Elminster of Shadowdale spread his hands apologetically, struggled up from his knees, and fell headlong into Lhaeo's reaching arms as another surge of Art carried him away, chilled and burned all at once.

  In a place of drifting mists, Elminster of Shadowdale gathered his will to banish the pain. Ice took him by the heart and throat as he groped for his Art amid the roiling magic that filled him.

  He found nothing. The Art that had served him for many hundred years was burned away. All his power had fled from him. His magic was gone.

  From a place where only gods walk cometh the Fall to cast down all the gods. Among them is Mystra, the goddess whose thought shapes and controls the eternal fires men call magic all across the world of Toril. What befalls that world if all the bounds and enchantments of its magic should burst at once, to let the fire flash free?

  The world perishes in flames, of course, and so this must not befall. Even in her destruction, a goddess can strive to do something noble, a last act of love for the world she's watched for so long.

  No time remains for a considered and orderly passage of power. No mortal frame can hope to hold her essence without burning to nothingness. No mortal mind can carry what she knows, without being snuffed out in an instant.

  Azuth must carry more. All of her Chosen must carry more. But one mortal must carry the chief load, lest all perish with Mystra's passing. One mortal must be chosen in an instant. One who can carry more than most. One who can resist the temptation to twist the power to his or her own ends, and by meddling doom all the Realms. One must suffer Mystra's Doom.

  In pride, folly, and despair at the moment of her passing, Mystra knows the mortal who must be chosen. Only one can hope to survive. Only one may succeed-and perhaps, much later, forgive.

  "Remember me," she whispers to the chosen one, with her last thought. There is not enough left of her to shed the tears that are the price of her long burden. "Remember me."

  "Lady Mystra," Elminster whispered in urgent reply, as he lay on the stones of his kitchen floor. "I love thee! I will remember. Take my thanks!"

  He could not tell if Mystra ever heard him, or if she was gone before his thoughts were formed. Elminster looked up at Lhaeo and felt tears wet on his cheeks.

  "She's gone," he mumbled, rather unnecessarily. Lhaeo nodded, and bent over him.

  "Aye," he said gravely, "but what has she done to you?"

  Through fresh tears, Elminster met a gaze that was wary and the gray of cool steel. He noted Lhaeo's ready grip on a belt dagger and made no move with
his own hands.

  "I am still myself," he said quietly. "Or as much as I can be with no magic left to me."

  Lhaeo stared at him in shocked silence for a long time. Then he whispered, "Old friend, I am sorry. Very sorry indeed." He knelt down and took Elminster's hand. "Gone for good?"

  Elminster shrugged and then slowly nodded. "I fear so."

  Lhaeo's look was grave. "There is no gentle way to ask this," he said slowly. "You have lived beyond most men. Without Art, will you soon crumble away?"

  Elminster grinned feebly. "Nay, Lhaeo. Ye're stuck with me awhile longer."

  "Then I suppose," Lhaeo said solemnly, "you'll be wanting to get up off this floor. I haven't swept it yet today."

  In a dark chamber far away, the silent, floating ring of beholders drew back as Manshoon, High Lord of Zhentil Keep, gasped and halted in his cold address to them. He stumbled, caught himself, and straightened to face them again, but on his bone-white face was a look of fear it had not worn for years.

  The beholders waited watchfully, many dark and glistening eyes staring at the human archwizard, ready to rend him in an instant if it should be needful.

  Manshoon looked around at all those eyes, took a deep breath, and licked suddenly dry lips. "Something has happened. Something terrible." He shook his head in disbelief. "Bindings have failed all across the Realms."

  The largest beholder drifted a little nearer. The cold, hissing voice of Ithaqull sounded coldly amused as it rolled out around the archmage. "An event that has possibilities, does it not?"

  As the sun went down over Shadowdale, Elminster sat, long pipe in hand, beside a placid little pool. Power still roiled within him, but there seemed less of it now than at first. Perhaps it was leaking away or leaving him by some means prepared beforehand by the Lady of Mysteries, or perhaps he was just getting used to it.